EDMONTON — There are 11 Ontario-born players on this Edmonton Oilers roster, and many, if not all of them, coughed up the $750 for lower-bowl tickets for family members to see whatever that was the team rolled out Saturday night in Toronto.
For 40 minutes, this was a kick in the pants, a dent in the wallet and a meat tenderizer to their collective pride, all rolled into one.
“We’ve got 11 guys from Ontario here,” said Markham native Warren Foegele. “Everyone has this game on their schedule. You come here once a year… I think the emotions were maybe a bit too high.
“It felt like every mistake felt like a massive dagger.”
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If you set out to define the term “embarrassing” in the language spoken by hockey people, you’d begin with a 6-3 loss on Hockey Night in Canada on the game’s biggest stage in Toronto — where you entered the third period trailing 5-0. The entire country tuned in for what was billed as a can’t-miss clash between two dynamic, competitive teams, and only one of those showed up for the first 40 minutes.
“It’s tough to win when you give up five,” offered Leon Draisaitl.
“You wanted to come out and win this game. We didn’t,” added Hamilton-born Darnell Nurse, plainly.
Edmonton popped a couple of third-period, power-play goals (Zach Hyman’s 49th and Corey Perry’s 10th), and Draisaitl scored his 36th with the goalie pulled, but this game marked the return of the big gaffe for the Oilers.
“Weird game,” Draisaitl observed. “They probably capitalized on every single one of their chances. We gave up a little too much in the first 40 and they did a good job capitalizing on their looks.”
That would be because every time the Leafs got a scoring chance, it was a Grade A opportunity.
Nurse opened the game with a bad defensive read and Wainwright, Alta. product Bobby McMann (two goals) had acres of room in the slot to pick his spot on Stuart Skinner, who got the mercy pull after 40 minutes. William Nylander had a puck carrom in off his skate to make it 2-0 after 20 minutes.
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Then the Keystone Cops skated out for the second period, with Draisaitl and Evan Bouchard turning full, uncontested possession in their own zone into an empty-net Leafs goal, followed by Adam Henrique losing a puck in his skates at the offensive blue-line. With loads of time by NHL standards, Henrique beat the puck square before coughing it up for a Leafs three-on-one that left the score at 4-0.
“We didn’t make many mistakes,” assessed head coach Kris Knoblauch, “but when we did they were big ones. And (Toronto) capitalized. It was unfair for Stu, I’m not sure any of those chances he’s going to have.”
An Oilers team that has gotten away with a few lapses of late and still managed to beat some lesser teams took its game down a level against a superior opponent in the Maple Leafs and paid dearly. Defensively, they looked like the team that got Jay Woodcroft fired back in October and November.
“That’s probably accurate,” said Foegele.
But still, this is a team that has lost just twice in regulation in its last 13 games (9-2-2). As ugly as this was for 40 minutes, in the big picture there is no need to panic.
In fact, inside their room they were building towards their Sunday night game in Ottawa, a process that started during the second intermission.
“We could have mailed it in (in the third period), but we didn’t do that. We played with pace and urgency, and we made it a game there,” said Foegele, whose team found itself down by just two goals with 3:39 to play.
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Give ‘em credit — the Oilers stunk but they didn’t pout over it. Even Mattias Janmark did what a good fourth-liner does, getting in an ill-advised scrap with sneaky-good pugilist Max Domi in an attempt to give his team a jumpstart.
“I thought that was a hell of a fight for Janne,” Foegele said. “He’s fighting a guy whose father knows how to fight, he knows how to fight, and (Janmark) was just trying to spark the team there. It wasn’t the outcome we wanted, but we stuck together.”
Sometimes a kick in the pride like this — with 13 regular-season games to play — doesn’t hurt. And the Oilers are not alone, as earlier in the day the Winnipeg Jets — Tuesday night’s opponents — rolled out their worst effort of the year in a 6-3 loss to the New York Islanders.
They’re waking up Sunday morning with the same feeling Edmonton has, a good team that knows it shorted itself the day before.
“The attention to detail (is what) it takes for 60 minutes as we come down the stretch,” said Nurse. “At this point in the season, everything is heightened to the extreme. That’s what we take from it.”
That, and a swift kick in the pride.
